Social and Ethical Values of Teamwork and Diversity: the Benefits of Diverse Teams

What the tangible and intangible benefits for an organization that has diversity as a core value?

This in turn can increase the creativity and innovation within organizations. As well, individuals from diverse backgrounds are able to provide companies with insight into foreign business practices, translation assistance, and offer detailed information to assist in market penetration. A diverse working team can also improve decision making by providing different perspectives on problems. Individuals embrace working alongside other cultures, as it is a personal learning process that will prove useful in the future.

Workplace diversity is when there is diverse culture of individuals in the workplace. It is when there is a value placed on the variety of ideas, race, ethnicities, religion, gender, sexuality and orientation, which is flourishing in an environment. Depending on your employer and workplace, workplace diversity can vary based off several different factors. Usually, there is a preferential standpoint taken on the matter and it can be either display a high or a low context culture of diversity. According to Mason (2013) Workforce diversity has been described as “a double-edged sword; it has the potential for positive and negative outcomes” (p.659). Workplace diversity is important in a business setting because it carries forward a combination of different types of people to work together in unity, encourages uniqueness, innovative, creative approaches, and supports interesting divergent ideas to accomplish tasks or goals.

Workplace diversity refers to the variety of differences between people in an organisation. Diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It is an understanding that each individual is unique, and a recognition of our individual differences. These differences can include ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, family status, religious beliefs, perspective, experience, or other ideologies.

Organizations must stop visualizing diversity as an issue and start seeing it as a benefit for the organization. There are several reasons why a diverse workforce will add value to a company. Most businesses, either large or small, work on a global scale; the information age has brought the entire world a lot closer. Having associates that can deal with different cultures around the world is crucial to an expanding business. A diverse workforce will help to build more rounded individuals with experience they will gain from a mixed environment. Customers will benefit from the diverse workforce because a company that makes a choice to be open and flexible with its associates will more than likely be easy to work with in a business relationship. Probably the most important aspect of having a diverse workforce is the vast knowledge gained by pooling the different life lessons, cultures and experience together thereby allowing everyone the chance to learn new and different business practices (Sappal, Pepi, 2002).

On a large scale it is typical to think of cars when first thinking of products that were not made in America. However, American society has products they use on a daily basis that are made overseas, such as the Apple iPhone. While the iPhone was designed in America, the manufacturing is out-sourced to China, Korea, Taiwan and Mongolio (entrepreneur.com). There has been discussions regarding moving the manufacturing to the United States (US). However, the cost is a great concern, and has been the delay in the discussion to move forward with this idea. Subsequently, like the iPhone other products currently made in other countries will cause the same concerns

The creators of this initiative will maintain responsibility for initiation and development of products to aid the diversity team with the overall process. The creators of this initiative will continue to coordinate daily after the initial discussion with, and delivery of the VSM to the SNCOA leadership on 19 Jan 16. The diversity team will assume responsibilities as the project POC from the initiative creators on 21 Jan 16 and lead four one-hour meetings to gather input from the instructor cadre to build talking points on the diversity initiative. On 24 Jan 16, and or upon receiving inputs from the instructor cadre, the diversity team will upload draft versions of joint and international diversity presentations to Blackboard for the Barnes Center curriculum team review/inclusion into ALE.

Diversity strengthens the team by recognizing the better ideas each person brings to the table. This brings about a lot of important benefits that help an organization in been a well-managed diverse workplace. Diverse work groups normally have better ideas, experience and a broader background. And tins enables ethnic and cultural diversity companies function at a global level with a better understanding of the global markets. Diverse teams posse’s cognitive flexibility because members have different education backgrounds. This involves a mix of analytical, and abstract thinkers, which enables the team to broaden their ability to handle difficulties smoothly. Having different point of views

Diversity today is seen not only as the aftermath of the globalization process but also as the driving force of progress and an integral part of success of modern organizations. Ethnic, racial, gender, and religious diversity makes each one of us a unique citizen of this globalized world. An organization that brings together employees with such different backgrounds, benefits from the vibrancy of thoughts and varied viewpoints, brought to the company by multiple cultures and unique experiences of its employees. Distinctive capabilities of such workers and their individual skill sets and talents allow them to come up with creative solutions, new ideas and proposals, which increase efficiency of a team. While working together employees of such

Organisations have sought out to have a more diverse workforce, as it is claimed to increase organisational effectiveness. A team with individuals from different social group, personalities, values and beliefs, and etcetera, when managed well, can be an asset to the organisation. More often than not, there will be some sort of discrimination in the workplace, especially with a very diverse workforce. Therefore, with proper training and benefits to ensure the development of these employees, and legislation and policy to ensure equality and reduce discrimination within the workforce, it can drive competitive advantage and organisational profit. When looking at diversity in the workforce, the business case and the moral case justification are often necessary. The following paragraphs will talk more about the business case and moral case, and the linkages between them, as well as the theories and conceptual frameworks for the business and moral cases justification for diversity management in organisations.

Increased globalization is the direction that all major multinational corporations are moving towards. Ford had made a good attempt at making a world car that proved to be partially successful in the beginning of sales. The company has learned that locational specialization is an extremely important aspect to selling globally because of the differing personal preferences and legal demands.

Participation of developing economies in globalization of the automotive industry was enhanced by innovations in telecommunication, technology development, and transportation. These elements made it possible for the industry to fragment its production processes and creation of smaller assembling plants that were located in different regions of the world. This segmentation of production processes created multiple global production networks and expanded the global market making many developing countries reap the benefits of globalizing the automotive industry (Maxcy 108).

The world's increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds than ever before. People no longer live and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, profit and non-profit organizations need diversity to become more creative and open to change. Maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity

Diversity in the workplace means bringing together people of different ethnic backgrounds, religions and age groups into a cohesive and productive unit. Advances in communication technology, such as the Internet and cellular phones, have made the marketplace a more global concept. In order to survive, a company needs to be able to manage and utilize its diverse workplace effectively. Managing diversity in the workplace should be a part of the culture of the entire organization.

Many opportunities are associated with a culturally diverse workplace and global expansion may have potential to provide just such a diverse work group. Cross-culturalism in business can provide leaders and employees with a wonderful opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and cultures. In addition, “the more opportunities for business leaders to interact with people from different cultures, the more likely they will be to have positive attitudes from different cultures and identify, learn and apply diverse culturally-appropriate business behaviors” (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2012, p. 614). Culturally diverse environments offer a multitude of benefits including “the variety of perspectives, skills and personal attributes” (Matveeve & Nelson, 2004, p. 254). Moreover, multicultural teams have potential to “generate more ideas of higher quality in brainstorming tasks” (Matveeve &